Heavy With Love

Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch, 2024

Namy’s exhibition at Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) begins with the prompt Peace begins with _______, written in both English and Arabic. It’s a cue and an invitation for our patrons to begin their library journey with a simple reflection on peace. Through video, photographs, sound, and more, Namy’s multimedia installation Studies for a Library (2023) reimagines how peace can be taught to counteract systems of ideological violence. Namy’s intimate portrait of the Khalid Jabara Memorial Library commemorates the death of his cousin Khalid, whose life was abruptly taken on the front steps of his Tulsa, Oklahoma home in a hate crime by a racist neighbor in 2016. Organized by Khalid’s family and the B'nai Emunah Preschool, which his niece attended at the time, The Khalid Jabara ‘Tikkun Olam’ Memorial Library was assembled by a community of educators and librarians dedicated to teaching social justice to young children from 0-5. 

Adjacent to the installation in BPL’s Grand Lobby is Libretto-o-o (A Curtain Design in the Bright Sunshine Heavy with Love) (2017). This sweeping, brightly patterned curtain was made from a patchwork of fabrics sourced from Sharjah’s vibrant Souk and sewn together by local tailors. It is part of a series in which Namy examines historical and material cultural expressions of pan-Arab opera and theater. 

As an extension of this research, Namy has assembled documentation from Halim El-Dabh, the Egyptian American composer and electronic music pioneer, featured in vitrines on the second floor. 

Also shown on the second floor is Family Trees (2014–22), a series of photographs depicting olive trees, some as old as 2,000 years, taken in Namy’s family village of Deir Mimas near the border in south Lebanon. 

For our youngest library-goers to our eldest, Heavy with Love is Namy’s beckoning towards the positive forces of love and social justice.

Curated by Cora Fisher, BPL Curator, and Fawz Kabra, Curator and Director of Brief Histories, New York.

The exhibition public program included a musical performance by Zafer Tawil; a storytime with Christopher Myers reading Wings; poetry and conversation with Maya Berry, Marwa Helal, Fawz Kabra

photos by Gregg Richards